Anti-spying activists plan rallies across US on July 4th holiday

The most prominent activist group formed in the wake of the National Security Agency (NSA) spying revelations, StopWatching.Us, has reached half a million supporters. On a call with reporters today, the group discussed its future plans, which include rallies in 90 cities around the country for the July 4th holiday.

While hundreds of thousands of Internet users around the world have signed the StopWatching.Us petition, the movement is still at an early stage in terms of actually getting laws changed. Josh Levy of Free Press said the group is arranging dozens of meetings with constituents concerned about spying and their lawmakers. The focus is on changing Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is believed to be the legal justification for the dragnet government surveillance uncovered by recent NSA leaks.

"We've seen authors of the Patriot Act say that section 215 is being interpreted in a way that they never anticipated," said Rainey Reitman, activism director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

There are a variety of bills that have been introduced, and the EFF is still analyzing them, Rainey said. Any change in Congress is going to take a long time. While there are a few dissidents, like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), they have historically not been the majority. The head of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander, was warmly received last month when he defended surveillance programs to a House committee.

The rallies are being organized by Restore the Fourth, a group formed last month in the wake of the NSA leaks. The organization aims to strengthen the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches.

Mozilla has been a key supporter of the coalition, and the company's VP of legal affairs, Harvey Anderson, was on the call today.

"More than 500,000 people have joined in less than three weeks," Anderson said. "I think that's pretty amazing and shows the concern people have. This kind of [surveillance] activity undermines the trust in what an open Internet can and should be."

Nothing will become of this.... not unless the protests grow into a scale not seen since the anti-Vietnam protests of the 60s. And even that would be a maybe. Vietnam protests made the establishment shake in their boots, but they still didn't pull out of the war for several more years.

Nothing will become of this.... not unless the protests grow into a scale not seen since the anti-Vietnam protests of the 60s. And even that would be a maybe. Vietnam protests made the establishment shake in their boots, but they still didn't pull out of the war for several more years.

Exactly. It is a big difference to "sign" and online petition vs actually giving up a day off to go protest. I imagine the group of people who do this is going to be quite small.

Lets hope that this pressure can get the so called "Patriot" Act either significantly reformed or repealed in its entirety. Personally I would rather have an increased probability of being blown to bits than having a surveillance state.

As others have mentioned we also need a law to make this type of third party information (data on servers, ISP data, cell phone metadata, etc.) explicitly private much like our medical information and information covered by attorney client priviledge. The information could be obtained under warrant, but the standard to convince the Judge should be set high. No more of this blanket warrentless intrusion, into what should be private matters and require a warrant obtained from a Judge through a high standard, should be allowed.

I'm curious to see what kind of turnout they get. Will they get a good crowd or will it be like the pro Snowden rally in Hong Kong that had 300 to 900 people show up?

Honestly, I hear nobody talking about the NSA except on the internet, nobody seems to give a shit about it at all.

The day is going to come when we'll be sorry we didn't do more about this before it was too late. Just as social security numbers grew beyond their original purpose in managing retirement benefits, all these spying programs will outgrow their current limitations. If you're going to data mine Facebook to catch terrorists, why not underage drinkers? That's obviously an extreme example, but does anyone really think the government will limit a program of this magnitude and cost to just stopping a few potential terrorist attacks a year? Why not bump up the value by adding tax evaders, embezzlers, or any other criminal subject to being caught with data mining?

I'm curious to see what kind of turnout they get. Will they get a good crowd or will it be like the pro Snowden rally in Hong Kong that had 300 to 900 people show up?

Honestly, I hear nobody talking about the NSA except on the internet, nobody seems to give a shit about it at all.

The day is going to come when we'll be sorry we didn't do more about this before it was too late. Just as social security numbers grew beyond their original purpose in managing retirement benefits, all these spying programs will outgrow their current limitations. If you're going to data mine Facebook to catch terrorists, why not underage drinkers? That's obviously an extreme example, but does anyone really think the government will limit a program of this magnitude and cost to just stopping a few potential terrorist attacks a year? Why not bump up the value by adding tax evaders, embezzlers, or any other criminal subject to being caught with data mining?

Well, honestly if you're dumb enough to boast about committing a crime on FB you deserve to be caught. Hell there's a better chance somebody will see it and turn you in, never mind data mining catching you.

And depending on what kind of records are being looked at I don't have an issue with it to catch criminals, especially white collar ones where discrepancies in financial records may be the only clue that something's going on.

I'm curious to see what kind of turnout they get. Will they get a good crowd or will it be like the pro Snowden rally in Hong Kong that had 300 to 900 people show up?

Honestly, I hear nobody talking about the NSA except on the internet, nobody seems to give a shit about it at all.

The day is going to come when we'll be sorry we didn't do more about this before it was too late. Just as social security numbers grew beyond their original purpose in managing retirement benefits, all these spying programs will outgrow their current limitations. If you're going to data mine Facebook to catch terrorists, why not underage drinkers? That's obviously an extreme example, but does anyone really think the government will limit a program of this magnitude and cost to just stopping a few potential terrorist attacks a year? Why not bump up the value by adding tax evaders, embezzlers, or any other criminal subject to being caught with data mining?

Well, honestly if you're dumb enough to boast about committing a crime on FB you deserve to be caught. Hell there's a better chance somebody will see it and turn you in, never mind data mining catching you.

And depending on what kind of records are being looked at I don't have an issue with it to catch criminals, especially white collar ones where discrepancies in financial records may be the only clue that something's going on.

So you think we should just disregard all that foolishness in the 4th Amendment about warrants and probable cause? The right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, etc? And freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures? Let's just forget about all that old fashioned crap, is that what you're saying?

If we're going to have a constitutional convention to get rid of that 4th amendment nonsense, why not get rid of the pesky 5th as well? Grand juries are expensive and a big inconvenience to jurors, getting rid of double jepoardy would help lock up the criminals we caught with suspicionless surveillance, and due process was fine in its time but who needs it today?

I'm curious to see what kind of turnout they get. Will they get a good crowd or will it be like the pro Snowden rally in Hong Kong that had 300 to 900 people show up?

Honestly, I hear nobody talking about the NSA except on the internet, nobody seems to give a shit about it at all.

The day is going to come when we'll be sorry we didn't do more about this before it was too late. Just as social security numbers grew beyond their original purpose in managing retirement benefits, all these spying programs will outgrow their current limitations. If you're going to data mine Facebook to catch terrorists, why not underage drinkers? That's obviously an extreme example, but does anyone really think the government will limit a program of this magnitude and cost to just stopping a few potential terrorist attacks a year? Why not bump up the value by adding tax evaders, embezzlers, or any other criminal subject to being caught with data mining?

Well, honestly if you're dumb enough to boast about committing a crime on FB you deserve to be caught. Hell there's a better chance somebody will see it and turn you in, never mind data mining catching you.

And depending on what kind of records are being looked at I don't have an issue with it to catch criminals, especially white collar ones where discrepancies in financial records may be the only clue that something's going on.

So you think we should just disregard all that foolishness in the 4th Amendment about warrants and probable cause? The right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, etc? And freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures? Let's just forget about all that old fashioned crap, is that what you're saying?

If we're going to have a constitutional convention to get rid of that 4th amendment nonsense, why not get rid of the pesky 5th as well? Grand juries are expensive and a big inconvenience to jurors, getting rid of double jepoardy would help lock up the criminals we caught with suspicionless surveillance, and due process was fine in its time but who needs it today?

If you publicly post something on FB how is that private? Which is why I said if you're dumb enough to do it you deserve to be caught.

And where did I say anything about search and seizure? Oh wait I didn't, you decided that comparing the wealth of publicly available and in many cases already required documents on a person's finances is the equivalent of having your door kicked in at 3am.

I tend to agree with some others that the turnout to these rallies will probably be pretty small, the fact that it's 4th of July holiday probably doesn't help since most people will be vacationing or hanging out with family and bbq's and fireworks.

With that said, I'll do whatever I can to help these type of groups out and to help the EFF out as well. Sadly I believe the government and governments across the world are only going to increase their intel gathering capabilities as the the threat of cyber war continues to increase and the ability to store big data continues to drop in price. Even though I think that's the final outcome, as long as I have a voice I am still going to voice my opinion and let people know I'm not happy about these things.